1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to an ink-jet image forming apparatus and a method of cleaning a printbar.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an ink-jet image forming apparatus forms a desired image by ejecting ink droplets onto a recording medium from a shuttle-type ink-jet head moving in a direction (a width direction of a recording medium) perpendicular to a conveying direction of the recording medium. The shuttle-type ink-jet head includes a printbar provided with a plurality of nozzles for ejecting the ink droplets. The ink droplets that are not ejected remain around the nozzles. After the printing operation is performed, if the printbar is exposed to the atmosphere, the ink droplets that remain around the nozzles may be solidified. In addition, dusts or fine particles contained in the atmosphere may adhere to the printbar. The solidification of the ink droplets or adhesion of the dusts alters an ejection direction of the droplets during subsequent printing operations, thereby deteriorating an image quality of a printed image.
Recently, instead of the shuttle-type ink-jet head, attempts to print at higher speeds use of an array ink-jet head that includes a printbar having a length in a main scanning direction corresponding to a width of a recording medium. In such an ink-jet image forming operation, the array ink-jet head is stationary, while only the recording medium is conveyed in a direction perpendicular to the main scanning direction. Hence, a drive mechanism of the ink-jet image forming apparatus is simple, and it is possible to achieve the higher printing speeds. According to the ink-jet image forming apparatus, the length of the printbar is about 210 mm to correspond to an A4 size of the recording medium, disregarding the printing margin of the width direction of the recording medium. Therefore, there is a need for an apparatus that effectively removes alien substances from the long printbar.